


Ways to Say I Love You When You Are Dying Inside

by Winnie_Chester



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, Unrequited Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Unrequited Love, implied suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2379701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winnie_Chester/pseuds/Winnie_Chester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four ways Winchesters say "I love you" that sound nothing like "I love you" at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ways to Say I Love You When You Are Dying Inside

**“I’m dropping out.”**

If he’d thought about it, if someone had put a gun to his head and asked him, Dean would have had to admit this wasn’t the life he wanted for himself. He’d have wanted that bullshit piece of paper, the stupid hat, the potential that came with it. 

His grades were indifferent, but only because he didn’t see much sense in trying if he was going to be somewhere different next week, next month. He wasn’t stupid, all though he’d been playing the roll long enough he sometimes forgot. But Dean understood the math problems, even if he couldn’t be bothered to actually do them. And—though he’d never admit it—he’d fucking loved physics. He’d done every one of the assignments, even if he’d only turned two in. 

But being the shop kid with an A in physics caused too much attention, and Dean had always known without having to be told that he couldn’t draw attention. 

Deep down, in a places he didn’t have-- had never had--the luxury of exploring, Dean wanted a normal life. And he knew that this choice was the first in a series of choices that would completely take that off the table. 

Dean may have _wanted_ a normal life, but what he _needed_ was to prevent Dad from screwing up Sammy’s life any more than he already had, what he _needed_ was to do everything he could to keep Sam from being a fourteen-year-old orphan. 

If he was going to be able to provide Sammy with any stability whatsoever, this was the end of the line. He had to drop out, and he knew it. 

If he dropped out, he could be around to back Dad up more, could monitor his increasingly serious relationship with Jim Bean, could make sure he didn’t get himself killed. And if he dropped out, maybe he could convince Dad to leave them behind a little more, let Sam finish out a semester at the same school he started it in. He wanted his brother to have what he couldn’t. 

So he’d get his G.E.D--even though Sammy would be furious, would never understand--and he wouldn’t think about the stupid piece of paper he’d never have anymore. 

He swallowed and signed the form.

Dean Winchester, high school drop out. 

**“I’m leaving.”**

Sam had decided to go well before he breathed a word of it to his brother. He’d known what leaving would do, how fucking hurt Dean would be, so he’d kept it to himself until the very last minute. 

He’d filled out applications and then enrollment forms in secret, he’d only let Bobby in on the plan because he’d needed a mailing address. But it was done. He was going. 

What his brother wouldn’t understand, would never understand, was that college was a life raft, but it was Dean it was meant to keep afloat. 

Sure, Sam was doing it for himself, too—he liked learning—but mostly he knew he had to leave Dean before he lost what little control he still had and ruined everything. Before he destroyed his family, before he brought Dean down with him. If Stanford was the life raft, then Sam was the slowly sinking ship. He was irreparably broken, he was taking on water, and he was going to drown everything and everyone around him. 

Sam could (barely) endure leaving his brother, but he couldn’t ruin him. He couldn’t blow up one of the only things Dean ever seemed to take pride in. He couldn’t let him know that despite Dean’s best efforts, despite everything he’d done, Sam was hopelessly defective. He couldn’t let his brother know he hadn’t been worthy. 

But with some space, some distance—deep down he didn’t think he’d get better, exactly, but he hoped he’d get better at fighting it. Sublimating it, maybe. Failing that, he’d just never come home, would disappear and take all this deviance with him. 

But now, here, Sam was suffocating under all this shame and lust and sickness and if it was only going to kill him, well fine. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t risk what that would do to his brother. So he had to do something. 

He had to go. 

Tonight he’d finally tell Dean. 

**“I’m fine.”**

Dean was wasted. In fact, Dean had been keeping himself in a near constant state of inebriation since Sam had left. 

After Sam had bailed Dean had found the flimsiest excuse for a case he possibly could and had left Dad and driven 600 miles to chase it on his own. It had only taken an afternoon to realize it was nothing—Dad had probably known that from the moment Dean had mentioned it, but had realized his son needed to be on the road—and Dean had spent the rest of the month absolutely ruining his liver and doing an increasingly poor job of staying out of bar fights over his pool hustling. 

Truth was, Dean liked the fights. 

It was easier to nurse a bruised jaw and busted knuckles than the raw, empty place Sam had left. 

It was easier to sleep after finding the bottom of a bottle. 

It was easier to be drunk and angry than sober and abandoned. 

Dean wasn’t yet at rock bottom, but he knew he was pretty fucking close. 

So when Sam had called, Dean’s first instinct had been to tell him just precisely what he’d done to his brother, his family. When Sam had called Dean had, in fact, been dabbing iodine on a cut some sore loser—who, in all fairness, Dean had picked because he had all the hallmarks of sore loser -- had left on his cheekbone. 

But Sam had sounded so normal—Dean had heard someone down the hall laughing in the background—that he just couldn’t. He wanted normal and happy for Sam, always had, even when it came at his own expense. 

So Dean had done his best to enunciate and he’d kept all the pain out of his voice. He spun his weeks of spiraling into a brief, booze soaked vacation, and by the end of the call he’d had Sammy laughing at a completely fictional story about an octogenarian on a hot streak taking $200 from him. 

Everything he told him was a lie—everything Dean ever said after I’m fine always was--but it made Sam feel better. 

 

**“Just needed some air.”**

Sam had barely been back—his jeans still smelled of smoke—when he realized all the defenses he’d put up, all the distance he’d created in the last four years amounted to exactly nothing. 

A few months in and he was back to the nocturnal habits of his adolescence, namely waking up hard and panicked, and slipping outside to go sit on the hood of the Impala and hate himself. 

So there he was, listening to the woosh of the cars and looking at the few stars that weren’t washed away by the yellow streetlights and the motel’s neon sign. Wishing there was a way to get off this fucked up merry-go-round. He knew he’d never find peace. There was no out. He’d never escape, and he could see quite clearly now that there was no way this was going to end well. 

He was sure that everyone was going to get hurt. It was inevitable, and all he could do was to keep pushing that moment another day into the future. Keep pretending until he couldn’t, give Dean as much happiness until then. 

So when Dean stuck his head out of the door, all sleep mused and bleary, to ask what Sam was doing, he didn’t say “going to pieces” or “barely holding it together” because that would only lead to questions that Sam was worried he wasn’t strong enough to lie about anymore. 

Sam tried to hide the raw scrape in his voice.


End file.
